Urgent Warning Issued To Millions Of Fire Stick Owners After Piracy Crackdown

ILLEGAL streamers affected by Amazon’s crackdown on “dodgy” Fire Sticks risk serious danger in the wake of the ban.

Gadget owners have been issued three stark warnings by security experts following the global Amazon block of piracy apps on Fire Stick devices.

At the end of October, The Sun revealed how Amazon had begun shutting off piracy apps.

These apps would allow Fire Stick owners to watch premium telly – like Hollywood movies and live sports – without paying the creators or broadcasters.

The device-level block meant that when Fire Stick owners would try to launch their “dodgy” apps, they simply wouldn’t load.

It’s left TV pirates scrambling for alternatives, leaving them at major risk of cyber-crime.

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The first danger is that users seek out alternative websites and apps to watch pirated telly.

This would allow TV fans to dodge Amazon’s restrictions as they wouldn’t be using a Fire Stick.

But security expert Michael Tigges, of Huntress, told The Sun that this is one of the most common ways for dangerous “malware” to spread on the internet.

He warned that that are “entire marketplaces” set up to sell usernames and passwords that have been stolen using this kind of attack.

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And consumer privacy advocate Chris Hauk, of Pixel Privacy, added: “Downloading pirated content from shady sites can often lead to malware infecting your computer.

“Either through the website itself, or via files that are often included with the content in the download.

“This can include malware disguised as video codec, games, or video players.”

The other tactic that Brits might try is to buy a different kind of “cracked” device to plug into their telly.

Hackers take devices like Fire Sticks and modify them to allow for illegal streaming.

But it’s not just Fire Sticks that have been used for this kind of piracy.

And experts warn that if someone else is setting up an illegal streaming device for you, you’re in danger.

“At the end of the day, you can’t trust the person who cracked it,” warned Paul Bischoff, a privacy expert at Comparitech.

“They could be malicious and hide malware in the device.

“Or they could be incompetent and fail to properly secure the device, leading to other attacks.”

And that’s not all.

These dodgy devices can see your home network exploited by crooks for profit.

Chris Hauk warned: “Cracked devices of any kind, especially in the case of Fire Sticks that come preloaded with apps to allow you to view pirated or restricted content, can contain malware or apps designed to use your device in botnets.

“Or for crypto mining, or other illegal activities, which could be traced back to your IP address.

STREAM SMARTER – NOT MORE DANGEROUSLY

HERE’S some advice from The Sun’s tech editor Sean Keach…

The fact that millions of Brits are turning to piracy isn’t a surprise.

Telly subscriptions are now wildly expensive, and it’s increasingly hard to justify having them all.

I mean a top-tier Netflix subscription will cost you £17.99 a month, while Disney+ comes in at £14.99 a month.

And the offering seems to be getting worse: Amazon now shows ads on your Prime Video movies and shows unless you pay extra (on top of your Prime membership) to remove them.

That’s an extra £2.99 on top of the regular £8.99 fee.

Netflix, meanwhile, just hiked prices in the US – and experts told The Sun that a UK rise is likely to follow.

And if you pay for Sky – and extra services like Sky Sports – then your costs will simply balloon.

So what are you to do?

Well one of the best strategies to cut your TV bills is to try something called “service cycling”.

That’s where you only have one TV service active at a time, and then rotate through a list.

So one month you pay for Netflix and watch all of its top telly.

Then scrap it and move on to Disney+ the next month, before binning that and going to Amazon for the third month.

Do this with three or four services then start the whole process over again.

It means you’ll get three or four months in each year to watch all of each app’s content.

So you won’t miss any top shows, but you’ll avoid paying for all of the apps every single month for an entire year.

It brings enormous savings and you won’t miss out on any great telly either.

Plus it’s totally legal, so you don’t have to worry about that.

“This could result in legal issues, or at the very least, higher bandwidth usage.”

The third problem comes from using VPNs – or virtual private networks – to try to mask your online piracy.

VPNs are a valuable privacy tool because they encrypt your online activity, scrambling what you’re doing to prevent spying.

So a VPN could be very handy for logging on to a coffee shop or airport Wi-Fi network.

But this scrambling process – and a VPN’s ability to make it look like you’re logging on from somewhere else – makes VPN apps very popular for piracy.

However, you can’t guarantee the safety of a VPN that comes pre-loaded on a cracked Fire Stick.

And turning to free VPNs can also be dangerous.

“It is my highest recommendation to be dubious of free VPNs,” said Huntess security analyst Michael Tigges.